Impressions
Weaving, liberated from the domestic realm, elevated to the monumental.
FOUNDATION VILLA DATRIS for contemporary sculpture
Aude Franjou is one of those encounters that lights up the mind, carries the imagination, and transforms the everyday. A worthy heir to the textile arts movement, following in the path of the great Sheila Hicks, Aude Franjou blends brutalism and poetry, creating a strong resonance with my own constant search for harmony between weavings, and mineral and organic materials. Her ethereal approach reflects the very essence of my aesthetic vision, where textures and colours respond to and intertwine with one another.
It takes all of Aude Franjou’s talent and subtlety to turn dazzling materiality into lyrical brilliance. Her work moves me deeply, because Aude Franjou unites poetry with strength. In that sense, we belong to the same creative community — one devoted to the enhancement of our cultural and architectural heritage, reinterpreted through the lens of this new millennium. Bathed in light, softness, and balance, Aude Franjou’s work both surprises and captivates. In my view, that is the best definition of a truly great artistic signature.
Stéphanie Coutas, Interior Architect and Designer
Right from the start, Aude Franjou’s Heart of the Fig Tree sets the tone. Far from the restrained craftsmanship once confined to the feminine, intimate, or domestic sphere, textile art has now become a fully fledged art form—transcending the boundaries of genre and context to inhabit space and often take on the mantle of sculpture.
Odile de Loisy, Art Historian
Upright or cascading forms, merging the textile and the organic, Aude Franjou’s creations at times appear almost alive—like fantastical plants in the midst of sprouting.
Fashion Network
Aude Franjou prefers the stripped-down forms of nature to speak of the “entwined hopes of humankind.” Her Wishing Roots—sculptures more than weavings of linen, tinted in exquisitely chosen hues and nestled between the trunks and branches of trees—carry, beyond their aesthetic appeal, a symbolic and poetic resonance.
VIE DES ARTS, Volume 51
Aude Franjou’s colorful, organic weavings possess a deep, vibrant presence and seem to have emerged from the very nature of the trees into which they blend.
Edith Herlemont-Lassiat, Exporevue magazine
Cords and twines are bound into systems of curves and bends, reminiscent of the pathways and vessels found naturally growing in the earth and our bodies. Aude Franjou’s sculptural projects demonstrate the links and similarities of all living things through the structural forms of our bodies. Thank you for sharing your work with us. We continue to love seeing your inspiring works of art.
Elizabeth Winnel Art curator at Artrepreneur
These stunning pieces, simultaneously natural and otherworldly, born from meticulous work, light up my imagination.
Keely Isaak Meehan Movement artist
Non-conventional sculptures ranging from monumental forms to sinuous miniatures in which nothing is left up to chance, the works of Aude Franjou are inspired by botanical architecture, the tree barks rough tactility, and the ramifications of corals. These works emerge from the physical, repeated, systematic gesture, from a technique honed over time that incorporates rural materials such as raw hemp, fibres that Franjou skilfully traps with linen yarns in shades of red, yellow, blue and white. The reading of these vibrant and intense works unveils the passions and complex nuances of the artist’s feelings, who invites us, through shapes, colours and spaces, to resonate with the essence of an evocative and unprecedented creative universe.
Maria Rosaria Roseo, Managing Editor ar ARTEMORBIDA textile art magasine
Aude is an installation artist who works with linen and hemp, creating organic forms that wrap thousands of times around a core, splitting and becoming larger — often climbing – configurations. They are evocative and primal, a study of plant-based forms and materials, with the physicality of the process still resonating in the end work.
Amy Meissner, Textile Artist
Like a breath of oxygen textile artist Aude Franjou brings volume to the art of weaving, creating mesmerising sculptures from linen fibres and natural dyes.
Tettigonia veridissima, on Instagram